Best utilities?

[PON]

Beyond Compare is one of my favorite utilities. I imagine that others who use it are also keen to find BEST available solutions. I am interested to compare notes on tools that others find indispensable.

I'll start the ball rolling with this one:

KeyNote from www.trangloss.com (http://www.trangloss.com)

One of the features that I'd most like to see added to BC is file deduplication. Since BC computes signatures for files this should be possible. What I'd REALLY like is if it could list SIMILAR directories and facilitate purging of duplicated files. I believe BC 3.0 will do this. In the meantime the following may useful:

Diskstate from Raxco.com (or geekcorp.com)
NoClone from noclonegroup.brinkster.net

These are good at the file level but do not show similar directories or make deduplication at the directory level easy. So far I haven't found anything that does. I've posted a question on Google Answers and nobody has come up with anything. So... I'm hoping BC 3.0 won't be too long coming.

Paul

[frodsham]

KeyNote from www.trangloss.com (http://www.trangloss.com)




Ummm. Try www.tranglos.com (http://www.tranglos.com).

I agree - people who appreciate Beyond Compare will appreciate other good utilities. Here are my must-haves (after BC of course):

TextPipe Pro:
Shareware
http://www.crystalsoftware.com.au/textpipe.html
An amazing and powerful text transformation tool. I use it daily to clean code, perform global updates on websites, etc. I've been thinking that TextPipe might be a useful way to pre-treat files before comparing them in BC.

Website Watcher
Shareware
http://www.aignes.com/
Monitors websites for changes and highlights the changes for you. I use it to keep up with software updates, news on 520 sites every day.

Syn
Open source
http://syn.sourceforge.net
An open-source programming editor. Many configurable features, scriptable.

(It's interesting to note that all of the above, including BC, were created with Delphi.)

VNC
Freeware
http://www.tightvnc.com/
"TightVNC is a free remote control package derived from the popular VNC software. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer."

WinCVS
Open Source
http://www.wincvs.org/

A GUI friendly front end to CVS, "Concurrent Versions System, the dominant open-source network-transparent version control system."

I'm always looking for other gems - let's hear about yours!

David

[jdmarch]

Total Commander, from http://www.ghisler.com/
Superb 2-panel (with multiple tabs per panel) shareware replacement for Windows Explorer. Nowhere near as good as Beyond Compare for folder/file comparison and synchronization, but indispensible for general folder browsing and maintenance. Also includes many plug-in file viewers, editors, etc.

4NT and Take Command 32 from http://www.jpsoft.com/
Superb shareware replacements for cmd.exe. Very powerful batch file extensions, command completion and recall features. I've been using it (and its predecessors) for about 15 years, can't begin to add up the time it's saved me. I don't use it as much in the last year because Beyond Compare and Total Commander are so powerful, but for many jobs it still can't be beat.

And two more:

Spam Assault! Pro 5.0 (http://www.spamassault.com/) has been recently released. Now I can manage multiple accounts from a single screen, and automatically clean out spam emails from every account at once! With the ability to view the entire message as well, it is one superb tool, too.

And KeyText2000 (www.mjmsoft.com) has some powerful keyboard/mouse scripting and text management capabilities. I use to to auto-generate Emails & responses, newsgroup posts, perform menial data entry tasks, and more.
Goldstar Software Inc.
Building on Btrieve(R) for the Future(SM)
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[jdmarch]

Another one I'll mention here since it came up in several posts today: AWK, the classic UNIX text filter utility. There's an excellent free version, MAWK for Win32, available at:
http://www.klabaster.com/freeware.htm

Takes a little time to learn, but can't be beat for automatic text file manipulation.

Paul ! Its very interesteing that you visit 500 sites each day....i'm interesting in automatization also. i prepared each day review of many sites also! content of new todays sites compares with content of old sites = only new texts go to one big html file to read for me...its good idea - i dont spend much time to explore web by visiting and read old or simple non-updates sites (i also have more 300every-sites).....just read news....please send me email i think we can change some ideas :) with best wishes did@aport.ru (sorry for english)

last post was for dayo please excuse me :)

dayo send me your contact did@aport.ru

[Tumbleweed]

Besides BC, I rely on UltraEdit for file editing and this great mouse and keystroke recorder for Windows:
http://www.kratronic.com/recorder/

One of my favorites is Second Copy, from http://www.centered.com/. This is an extremely flexible program for copying / back-up of files and directories. Script driven, with scheduling.

btw that url is http://www.tranglos.com/ not as shown here :confused:

Check out Webdrive (http://www.webdrive.com) it maps ftp and webdav servers to local drives on your Windows machine. So you can edit directly on ftp drive from any Windows or dos program at all.

[AndrewB]

Here are some of my favorite utilities, along with Beyond Compare, which I just ordered.

1. PSPad - this editor has so many useful tools I wish I had found it sooner. http://www.pspad.com/

2. ColorCache - for generating color palettes and picking colors from screen. http://www.tlhouse.co.uk/ColorCache/index.shtml

3. Word Spring. Spell checks just about anything, including text boxes on web pages. Also has lookup ability with dictionary and thesaurus. http://www.alcodasoftware.com/word-spring.htm

4. Post-It Software Notes Lite. These are virtual Post-It notes. I use these constantly as I work, mostly for code snippits and reminders of things to check. http://www.3m.com/market/office/postit/com_prod/psnotes/index.html

One of my MOST favorite utilities is ClipMate (www.thornsoft.com (http://www.thornsoft.com) ). I never realized how useful a clipboard manager could be until I had it. Now I never lose that important code snippet just because I had to copy another important snippet.

Plus, with PowerPaste, I can copy a list of values one-by-one and then paste them consecutively into something else, without flipping back and forth.

I use it more than any other software I own.

[Pachacutec]

Meazure 2.0 (http://www.cthing.com/Downloads.asp) : handy tool for measuring screen, taking screenshots, colorpicking (free / donationware)
RoboForm (http://www.roboform.com/) : automatic form filler, password database, secure post-it notes, ... (version for USB stick as well)
Notepad 2 (http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html) : extended, but still lightweight replacement version for notepad (freeware)
The Regulator (http://royo.is-a-geek.com/iserializable/regulator/) : regular expression builder, including link to online database